Ed
Thanks for reaching out.
I think that with $3M to support a “yes” vote, there will be no problem with the sales tax passing. The opposition is small, not funded, and few. I doubt my voice carries much weight any more. I have been called a “has been” by one of the “yes Meck” people so – there you go (very professional, by the way, there is one person who is getting way too personal in supporting Yes Meck.) Good people can disagree, and it pains me to be on opposite sides with Shannon Binns, who I respect and align with on so many points. And with our delegation and many who are my friends.
But I still am opposed to its current structure, and cannot in all conscience support something for which I have so many doubts. And I also hope that some of the concerns raised will be taken to heart by anyone listening – and again, I do not know if anyone is – but there are issues that can be worked out and I hope they are.
– Do you realize that 1/3 of Mecklenburg residents are on Medicaid? And many of them will lose their healthcare soon due to budget delays and federal cuts. For them, $11 a month (if that is even accurate, since fast food and prepared food would be taxed at the rate of 9.25%, and many low income families go to Bojangles and McDonalds for meals) does mean a lot. The timing – when thousands are losing jobs, nonprofits are closing, the food banks are seeing higher demand – is wrong for a 14% sales tax hike. Plus, this tax is a forever increase as it has no sunset, unlike the “pennies for progress” sales tax in York county, which has to be renewed every 7 years, letting voters judge results. (By the way, the current sales tax in York County is 7% – where do you think people in Matthews and Mint Hill will go for big purchases on clothing, washing machines, school supplies and more when our sales tax rises to 8.25%? Business is worried about that in North Meck too).
– Added to that – Mecklenburg County increased property taxes in fiscal year 2025 and for fiscal year 2026. The county estimates the median household will pay a combined $74 in higher property taxes for those two increases. The city of Charlotte did not raise property taxes this year. But it did increase them last year, a hike that cost the median homeowner $49 annually. The biggest hikes have been fees homeowners pay for garbage, storm water and water service. In fiscal year 2025, the city said those hikes would cost the median homeowner an extra $67 a year. For the upcoming fiscal year, the median homeowner will pay $90 more.
That’s a two-year tax-and-fee hike of $280. If you add the transit sales tax ( the $240 a year estimate), that’s a two-year increase of $520. (info from the NC Budget and Tax Center)
It is interesting to me that one of the arguments for not increasing schools funding was that they were not improving student outcomes, so why throw more money at a system that is not helping students – why reward them with more money when they are not producing results (not my argument at all, but heard it a lot from your side). Yet, when it comes to underperforming transit, there is no need to fix certain things before putting a forever sales tax on people to increase funding for it:
- From 2013 to 2023, bus ridership fell by 65%, while the money spent to operate the bus system grew by nearly 50%.
- The dramatic difference between budget growth and ridership has driven up the cost per passenger trip. In FY 2014, the cost was about $3.70 per trip. By FY 2025, that figure had quadrupled to nearly $16 per trip.
– Don’t tell me that low income families will get the most from this when only 20% goes to the bus system. They feel the exact opposite. The Red Line and its huge cost will service the wealthiest areas of the county. The median household income in Davidson in 2023 was $153,000 (compared with Charlotte at $78,000). The roads projects are all over, but since there are no dollar amounts given, no one knows if the east and west – the Crescent – will benefit more or less in those improvements.
– The PAVE act has all kinds of restrictions in it. Reports have to go to the general assembly, starting in Jan 2026, and every year to different NCGA committees. The Red Line has to be 50% complete “as evidenced by a scope of work schedule,” and I have heard different explanations of what that means. There are many in the north who doubt that the Red Line will actually get finished. Plus, the Red Line plans to be a commuter line, with 2-3 trips in the morning and 2-3 trips after work hours. Many who live in Davidson want to use it to go to shows or the symphony at night – will it run that late? Not as planned now.
– The roads booklet which the city has been handing out is vague, without numbers, without timelines – and has phrases like “improve multimodal access to commercial areas, services, and activity centers…” And I guess as Shannon Binns puts it, that does mean there is flexibility so we can just trust that the projects that will happen are ones in the best interest of the communities. But for others it means no way to hold folks accountable for fulfilling vague plans.
– Safety is a concern, not just for riders, but for employees. People didn’t see much change after the bus driver was shot in 2022 and then after the shootout between a driver and passenger in 2023. Things didn’t seem to change until the horrific stabbing this year.
– There is no preparation for the displacement/gentrification that will occur around Red Line stops. Has there been any land banking purchases around the planned stations, designated for affordable housing?
– WIth 27 members, this Transit Authority will be one of (maybe the largest) largest authorities in the country. The appointees are not directly accountable to the people, only to the authority and those appointing them. Yet, there is not a position for a CATS driver or a captive rider (someone who is disabled and has to use public transit every day) to get the street level view of changes to the system. I met a woman who is a backup driver for CATS, who replaces drivers when they are sick, and who has driven every single route in the system over the past 20 years. I asked her if anyone ever asked her about her ideas for better routes, more riders, safety, or other issues, and she said no. Minor issue, I agree, but it’s also part of employee morale.
– There is an alternative – the quarter cent sales tax, that any NC county can levy for any county purpose – info on the NCACC site explains it. The county could put that on the ballot and not have the restrictions laid out in the NCGA bill , to give more flexibility and public input as the tax gets collected. It would bring in almot $80 M a year and that could fund the Better Bus program as well as begin the Red Line construction. It would not include roads. The county and city could then have more time to include the public in updating bus routes (how do we know that more frequency just using the same routes, that all go into the Transit Center and back out, no cross town routes, will increase ridership? The city could prioritize the roads projects and put some $ estimates to them for better transparency. When we put a school bond before the voters, we list every project, the order it will be paid for, estimated cost and estimated time of completion. Where are the numbers and studies supporting the thesis that frequency alone (along with Microtransit) willi increase ridership? It would give time for exploring additional funding such as bonds, naming rights, advertising, air rights over stations, parking fees or parking facility taxes, congestion taxes, tax increment financing, public-private partnerships, amenity fees (like wifi in stations) – all these are actually options listed in the PAVE act for ways to perhaps fund the Silver Line (which has gotten short shrift in it all – I won’t even mention that as it is well known the east side is quite upset with the current plan).
– And probably the biggest issue of all, trust. The people who oppose this tax do not trust the state or local governments based on past experience and on the current lack of transparency at both levels. PAVE has Tricia Cotham as the lead sponsor, and great that she could negotiate with her colleagues, but that does not restore trust to those in her former or current district and her former party that saw her abuse their trust in her.
There are too many uncertainties in our economy and in the current management. Will a new authority be better? And what are the legal and financial risks of having to transfer all assets, liabilities, debt, employees, contracts, etc to a new entity that does not have the full faith and credit of an underlying tax base behind it (only a sales tax) ?
As I mentioned, there are good people on both sides of this issue, as it is not a clear cut win either way. I haven’t even listed all the objections in this email but you get the idea. I hope that you and others will be dedicated to addressing some of these concerns when it does pass and that you will improve on transparency, perhaps with a dashboard of projects and progress (which we now have with the SEAP – fabulous! – but not with the Mayors Racial Equity Initiative, for one).
Thanks
Jennifer
On Tue, Oct 7, 2025 at 11:31 AM ed eddriggs.com <ed@eddriggs.com> wrote:
Jennifer,
Having worked for the past three years to bring our Mecklenburg County mobility plan to the point of a sales tax referendum, I am puzzled and disappointed at your efforts to undermine it. The simple proposition “the sales tax is regressive” does not do justice to the analysis that is needed to make a responsible recommendation. A few things to consider:
- Investment in infrastructure is vital to economic, social, housing, safety, and environmental goals of a community, to name a few.
- The County’s options to fund such investment are few, basically sales or property tax. A property tax would also be regressive, but, unlike a sales tax, 100% of the property tax would be paid by County residents, versus 70% of the sales tax.
- The sales tax is indeed “regressive” in that lower income households spend a higher percentage of their income on goods and services subject to sales tax. However, unless you think that all goods and services are what we economists call “inferior goods”, i.e., those of which the amount consumed actually falls as incomes rise, higher income consumers will pay more dollars in sales tax even if the percentage of their income this represents declines at higher incomes.
- Although I don’t have all the demographic data, I think it is safe to say the preponderance of riders on public transit are from lower-income households, seventy percent of riders are African Americans. These are the people who will benefit most from a $12-$17 billion investment in transit, and most of them will also benefit from $8 billion spent on roads. A majority of the cost will be borne by mid- to higher income households and people who live outside Mecklenburg County. The relevant economic standard is not the “regressive” tax, but a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis that recognizes that there is a large transfer of wealth implied by the way in which benefits will accrue relative to the incidence of the costs.
- A household that spends $30,000 a year on goods and services subject to sales tax would pay an additional $300 a year in tax. That is about 82 cents a day. How much of a reduction in daily travel time and improvement in safety do you think even a low-income household would need to see to find that a worthwhile investment?
If the sales tax fails, quality of life in Mecklenburg County will start to decline as local budgets fail to keep up with growth. Ironically, the biggest losers would likely be low-income members of the community on whose behalf some people are raising objections to the referendum. Under the terms of the P.A.V.E. Act, we could try again in the future, but valuable time would be lost, costs would rise, and we would be in the same place we are now.
If you think there is a better alternative to this plan, know that it would take years to gain all the necessary local and state approvals to implement it. Remember also that every single Democrat in the General Assembly as well as a very large majority of local elected officials voted in favor of this plan.
As a former Mayor and County Commission Chair, you have a bigger audience for your views than most people. I hope you will use your influence to help us move ahead with a Mobility Plan that will pay dividends in the community for decades to come.
Thank you for your attention to these considerations.
Ed